I rewatched that Nolan trilogy last month and it is incredibly reactionary.
Short thoughts on each film:
Batman Begins: Why does the League of Shadows even care about the "corruption" in Gotham? To be clear, Gotham is depicted as incredibly corrupt, but what do these people in Asia care? It almost looks like it would be about revenge against Wayne industries exploiting cheap labor, because you see some cargo boxes labeled with Wayne, but it isn't about that at all. So the motives were bewildering.
Dark Knight: Honestly the best of the three. Joker's motive of just being a crazy guy I think is wholly insufficient, but the backbone of the film IMO is the Harvey Dent story arc. Joker's little speech to Harvey about how everyone else is a schemer is extra stupid because all Joker does the entire film is scheme. In Dark Knight yes there is a big Noble Lie and a PATRIOT Act spy system, but neither one is portrayed as being a good thing, but a necessary thing. But that's how the slide toward fascism always begins, right?
Dark Knight Rises: There isn't another spin on it. It's dialed up in the third film where a major plot point is the difference between a functioning society and a non-functioning one is the police force. This is the fascist police state movie.
He couldn't even decide what the whole give Gotham back to the people thing meant. The supposed popular uprising is shown as rich people getting forced out of their fancy condos. This is depicted as being bad, of course. But there isn't any depiction of anything going wrong in Gotham to foment popular resentment and revolt. In fact the movie makes a point of saying how Gotham's streets are clean and crime is low thanks to the Noble Lie from the prior film. Nobody seems to have an issue with this except for Bane and the League. For some reason. Still. But, no matter, the unwashed masses are angry! Or are they? Because aside from that short montage of some people marching in the streets and kicking the rich people to the curb, everyone was just cowering under Bane's henchmen, so it wasn't even consistent on the whole give Gotham back thing. Dark Knight Rises was a truly awful film on almost every level.
Nolan seems to believe either he's too smart for his audience, or his audience is too dumb for him. Not sure which. The plane thing at the start was really cool, though.
Never really thought of the League's motive but it definitely is weird. I remember in the first film when Raz explains that the league has put an end to many a great empire when their decline had started. But what sense does it make to accelerate their ends with no true motive? Like, it all most sounds like they were trying to maintain some sort of balance or progression, but a balance/progression of what exactly?
Also DK does that cringe thing where general chaos and disorder=anarchy. NGL, for a long time, when I was more of a lib, I viewed anarchy in that way. I guess it isn't shocking how this is how many people see anarchy with how it's usually taught in schools and is represented in mainstream media.
yeah he explains how the league of shadows has been there for all these supposed historical purges of major cities and it's like... dude? The Great Fire of London was you? And the UK then colonized the world? Sounds like you failed!!
It probably makes sense if you're a fascist and believe in "dgeneracy" and social darwinist shit. "This civilization is no longer darwin fit so we most euthanize it to keep the geneseed of the volk strong!" Shit. Fash would just be like "oh yeah Race al-Bannon is just trying to purge the dgenerates from society but bat-fash thinks the city can still be saved before it becomes untermenschopolis and hurts the fitness of,idk, other cities?"
The league of shadows are straw an-prims or anarcho-nihilists, or a non-straw version of whatever this anarcho-warhammerist people think they"re doing. Remember the "some men just want to watch the world burn" line. Nolan thinks a desire to change anything is inherently incomprehensible.a
The third movie was Nolandoing anti-Occupy propaganda on behalf of the Capitalists. Just straight up, no complexity - "these people who want banks held accountable for making their lives worse are evil and insane"
Dark Knight Rises: There isn't another spin on it. It's dialed up in the third film where a major plot point is the difference between a functioning society and a non-functioning one is the police force. This is the fascist police state movie.
It's been forever since I've seen that movie, but isn't Bane just objectively right? Like not even in a "Killmonger is right, but he shouldn't have started kicking puppies" way?
He has to be for something to be right about it. He's not really for anything except exposing Gotham's corruption but not in a way that makes sense, and only really kind of by accident. He recovers notes from Gordon about the "truth of Harvey Dent." Bane later exposes the Harvey Dent/Two Face lie to the people of Gotham, as if it was his plan all along. But his plan was set into motion long before he discovered those notes, so I'm just going to have to conclude no. Bane was not right about anything, nor wrong about anything. He's just a cartoon villain who plans to kill everybody in Gotham, including himself. The movie just makes it appear that he's about more than this. A sort of deception on the filmmaker's part to make the movie's plot appear complex.
Coming back to this many hours later to just point out that Talia al Gul is equally nonsense as a villain. She's back in Gotham to complete her father's work. Her father, who she didn't know and didn't like because she was born in a prison.
Then the whole time bomb element? They were planning on blowing up Gotham and themselves. They could've done this at any time. Why wait until the literal moment that time runs out? The plot of this movie makes such little sense because the characters motivations are so stupid. But they're not laid out plainly, so it's given an appearance of depth where there is none. It's just occluded.
The Dark Knight Rises really could have used a rewrite to clean up all of those problems, but the writers were on strike I think. The biggest one for me is when Bane starts the riots by revealing the truth from the last film - why would anyone in Gotham get the torches and pitchforks out over hearing that a guy whose been dead for eight years killed a couple cops and it was covered up? And why would their response to learning this information be to burn down the prison and free all the prisoners? The film should have smash cut from his big speech to some pundits arguing over whether or not it was true, and most of the city not giving a shit.
Good points. I think it's fair to say if anything they'd be complacent or even happy that the Dent Act is in effect, not just apathetic, because Americans only understand stories where the police almost caught the bad guy... but if only their hands weren't tied by the friggin' law!!
A law where the police can catch all the bad guys? Sounds like a good thing! And in the movie it is, because it's not shown to be overreach. Anyone in prison is shown to actually be a Bad Person. The cops aren't corrupt or criminal, and no civilian is wrongfully targeted.
Really, before Bane makes an appearance the only bad thing going on in Gotham is Bruce Wayne is depressed and withdrawn, which means he's not managing any of his philanthropic (lol) projects like funding the orphan boys' home.
He couldn't even decide what the whole give Gotham back to the people thing meant
I think releasing all the criminals locked up by Harvey dent act is supposed to be the giving back to people thing. Since Gotham has the dumbest police force in entire world, Bane could capture the whole city with just the prisoners released
I rewatched that Nolan trilogy last month and it is incredibly reactionary.
Short thoughts on each film:
Batman Begins: Why does the League of Shadows even care about the "corruption" in Gotham? To be clear, Gotham is depicted as incredibly corrupt, but what do these people in Asia care? It almost looks like it would be about revenge against Wayne industries exploiting cheap labor, because you see some cargo boxes labeled with Wayne, but it isn't about that at all. So the motives were bewildering.
Dark Knight: Honestly the best of the three. Joker's motive of just being a crazy guy I think is wholly insufficient, but the backbone of the film IMO is the Harvey Dent story arc. Joker's little speech to Harvey about how everyone else is a schemer is extra stupid because all Joker does the entire film is scheme. In Dark Knight yes there is a big Noble Lie and a PATRIOT Act spy system, but neither one is portrayed as being a good thing, but a necessary thing. But that's how the slide toward fascism always begins, right?
Dark Knight Rises: There isn't another spin on it. It's dialed up in the third film where a major plot point is the difference between a functioning society and a non-functioning one is the police force. This is the fascist police state movie.
He couldn't even decide what the whole give Gotham back to the people thing meant. The supposed popular uprising is shown as rich people getting forced out of their fancy condos. This is depicted as being bad, of course. But there isn't any depiction of anything going wrong in Gotham to foment popular resentment and revolt. In fact the movie makes a point of saying how Gotham's streets are clean and crime is low thanks to the Noble Lie from the prior film. Nobody seems to have an issue with this except for Bane and the League. For some reason. Still. But, no matter, the unwashed masses are angry! Or are they? Because aside from that short montage of some people marching in the streets and kicking the rich people to the curb, everyone was just cowering under Bane's henchmen, so it wasn't even consistent on the whole give Gotham back thing. Dark Knight Rises was a truly awful film on almost every level.
Nolan seems to believe either he's too smart for his audience, or his audience is too dumb for him. Not sure which. The plane thing at the start was really cool, though.
Never really thought of the League's motive but it definitely is weird. I remember in the first film when Raz explains that the league has put an end to many a great empire when their decline had started. But what sense does it make to accelerate their ends with no true motive? Like, it all most sounds like they were trying to maintain some sort of balance or progression, but a balance/progression of what exactly?
Also DK does that cringe thing where general chaos and disorder=anarchy. NGL, for a long time, when I was more of a lib, I viewed anarchy in that way. I guess it isn't shocking how this is how many people see anarchy with how it's usually taught in schools and is represented in mainstream media.
yeah he explains how the league of shadows has been there for all these supposed historical purges of major cities and it's like... dude? The Great Fire of London was you? And the UK then colonized the world? Sounds like you failed!!
It probably makes sense if you're a fascist and believe in "dgeneracy" and social darwinist shit. "This civilization is no longer darwin fit so we most euthanize it to keep the geneseed of the volk strong!" Shit. Fash would just be like "oh yeah Race al-Bannon is just trying to purge the dgenerates from society but bat-fash thinks the city can still be saved before it becomes untermenschopolis and hurts the fitness of,idk, other cities?"
Idk fuck Nolan.
but le epic bane mask face
4U
The league of shadows are straw an-prims or anarcho-nihilists, or a non-straw version of whatever this anarcho-warhammerist people think they"re doing. Remember the "some men just want to watch the world burn" line. Nolan thinks a desire to change anything is inherently incomprehensible.a
The third movie was Nolandoing anti-Occupy propaganda on behalf of the Capitalists. Just straight up, no complexity - "these people who want banks held accountable for making their lives worse are evil and insane"
It's been forever since I've seen that movie, but isn't Bane just objectively right? Like not even in a "Killmonger is right, but he shouldn't have started kicking puppies" way?
B-b-but the rich people's houses got looted! A-and they had people's courts!
He has to be for something to be right about it. He's not really for anything except exposing Gotham's corruption but not in a way that makes sense, and only really kind of by accident. He recovers notes from Gordon about the "truth of Harvey Dent." Bane later exposes the Harvey Dent/Two Face lie to the people of Gotham, as if it was his plan all along. But his plan was set into motion long before he discovered those notes, so I'm just going to have to conclude no. Bane was not right about anything, nor wrong about anything. He's just a cartoon villain who plans to kill everybody in Gotham, including himself. The movie just makes it appear that he's about more than this. A sort of deception on the filmmaker's part to make the movie's plot appear complex.
Coming back to this many hours later to just point out that Talia al Gul is equally nonsense as a villain. She's back in Gotham to complete her father's work. Her father, who she didn't know and didn't like because she was born in a prison.
Then the whole time bomb element? They were planning on blowing up Gotham and themselves. They could've done this at any time. Why wait until the literal moment that time runs out? The plot of this movie makes such little sense because the characters motivations are so stupid. But they're not laid out plainly, so it's given an appearance of depth where there is none. It's just occluded.
The Dark Knight Rises really could have used a rewrite to clean up all of those problems, but the writers were on strike I think. The biggest one for me is when Bane starts the riots by revealing the truth from the last film - why would anyone in Gotham get the torches and pitchforks out over hearing that a guy whose been dead for eight years killed a couple cops and it was covered up? And why would their response to learning this information be to burn down the prison and free all the prisoners? The film should have smash cut from his big speech to some pundits arguing over whether or not it was true, and most of the city not giving a shit.
Good points. I think it's fair to say if anything they'd be complacent or even happy that the Dent Act is in effect, not just apathetic, because Americans only understand stories where the police almost caught the bad guy... but if only their hands weren't tied by the friggin' law!!
A law where the police can catch all the bad guys? Sounds like a good thing! And in the movie it is, because it's not shown to be overreach. Anyone in prison is shown to actually be a Bad Person. The cops aren't corrupt or criminal, and no civilian is wrongfully targeted.
Really, before Bane makes an appearance the only bad thing going on in Gotham is Bruce Wayne is depressed and withdrawn, which means he's not managing any of his philanthropic (lol) projects like funding the orphan boys' home.
I think releasing all the criminals locked up by Harvey dent act is supposed to be the giving back to people thing. Since Gotham has the dumbest police force in entire world, Bane could capture the whole city with just the prisoners released